Discourse-semantics Analysis of References in two Selected Excerpts from Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Americanah
Abstract
Abstract
This article seeks to explore the discourse-semantics of two selected excerpts from Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s
Americanah with a focus on reference chains study. The choice to focus on studying reference chains in the
selected excerpts aims at first appraising the way Adichie has used them to realize texture within her studied texts.
It second aims at finding the extent to which references have contributed to the encoding of underlying meanings
therein. To arrive at this, the research has appealed to the mixed quantitative and qualitative methodology. Through
the quantitative methodology, the data obtained after analyses have been summarized organized and presented
statistically in an informative way. The qualitative methodology ensued has allowed to give sense to the most
interpretable data collected. Indeed, the research has interestingly arrived at impressive results. Among several
others, the research has revealed that the studied texts are highly cohesive with endophoric references largely
predominating over the other reference types. Using such cohesive ties as Adichie has done, has allowed her texts
not only to stick together but also to be highly readable and flow logically. Moreover, the extensive use of
endophoric references, as witnessed in the studied texts, is revelatory of their mode which is archetypal of a
monologic written text. In other respects, the considerable number of exophoric references in the first excerpt
reveals its tenor dimension. Such a linguistic feature indicates that it was produced in a context of immediate faceto-face
feedbacks
with
language
accompanying
action.
On
the
other
hand,
the
fewer
number
of
the
same
reference
type
in
the
second
excerpt
reveals
its
field
and
unveils
that
it
is
a
written
reflective
text
reconstructing
an
experience.
Drawing
upon the theoretically founded analysis of the selected excerpts and the interpretation of the collected
data arrived at, the research opens up to such further investigation areas of the systemic functional linguistics as
the interpersonal meaning, the experiential meaning, and the textual meaning.